Vasilis' research focuses on prophetic eschatological, apocalyptic, and post-apocalyptic narratives in the Greek Orthodox Christian context.
He holds a master’s degree in Global Studies from the Humboldt University of Berlin and a master's degree in Public Policy and Human Development from Maastricht University. During his graduate studies he attended classes at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the University of Pretoria for a semester each.
He obtained his bachelor’s degree from the Department of Traditional Music in Arta, Greece, and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Amsterdam.
His dream is to join the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch.
Vasilis’ PhD research focuses on contemporary prophetic eschatological discourses stemming from the Greek Orthodox Christian Church. Prophecies foretell moments of ultimate catastrophe and speak of global conspiracies that ordinary people are allegedly blind to. By crafting certain ideas about crisis and emergency, prophecies offer alternatives to mainstream interpretations of war and conflict, territorial boundaries and border violations and bio-political policies. In so doing, they create clear-cut distinctions between communities of evil and good; articulate racist and xenophobic vocabularies; salute deathly borders and war; and long for the emergence of new imperial ventures.
This project investigates what new meanings of borders and sovereignties prophecies offer and how territorial boundaries and social-relations are re-imagined in a post-apocalyptic world. Vasilis also interrogates what ideas about justice and history factor in the making these imaginaries and how they relate to old and new irredentist and nationalist aspirations. Given the hold prophecies have on people and every-day life, Vasilis aims at elucidating how prophetic discourses shape social boundaries, influence voting behavior, foster far-right mobilization, and asks whether prophetic discourses can be understood as response to structures of power and governmentality.
The methodological undertaking of this project involves structural and discourse analysis, as well as ethnographic research at monasteries in Greece.